Graduate Student News
recent Master of Arts Graduates
Congratulations to our Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 Master of Arts in Humanities graduates, an intellectually diverse group of excellent scholar/writers, as evidenced by their theses titles. All graduate theses are professionally bound, catalogued, and shelved in the Dominican University of California library. We are proud to add their work to our collection.
KATHLEEN DEADDER
A Fragile Balance: The Venetian Glass Industry in Cross-Cultural Artistic Exchange with the Islamic World
JENNIFER EDWARDS
The Exalted Everyday: Pierre Bonnard’s Captivating Color
ELIZABETH EVANS
Credit: Part Three of a Three Part Novel
NORMAN GOLCHEREH
Non-thesis track
KEITH HAYES, Academic Scholar
Junior High: An American Saga
PATCHARIN KAMPANG
Non-thesis track
NANCY LABASH
The Dark Side of Computer-Age Communications
ANNE O’BRIEN MARTINEZ
Modern Yoginis: How Western Women Have Fundamentally Changed the Practice of Yoga
MARIO TOFANO
Imagining the Jassocracy: Political Rhetoric’s Influence on Supra-Narrative
Graduate Liberal Studies Conference at Reed College
Submitted by Elizabeth Skelton
I was a newbie at the 2010 GLS Symposium held at Reed College this summer. I had no previous experience presenting a graduate level research paper and I had no preconceived expectations. I had never been to the Reed College campus and had only been to Portland, OR once before. As my departure day drew closer, I was starting to dread the liklihood of rain and the lack of sunshine. Great. The weather was going to be just like the Bay Area - grey and dreary with the addition of rain. I packed my raincoat and umbrella.
The afternoon I arrived in Portland, I was greeted with sunny skies! It was a startling omen and I was warming up to the idea of a pleasant weekend. The Friday night welcome dinner was an informal barbeque set outside on the green of the campus housing complex. On Saturday morning, my presentation on the Hours of Catherine of Cleves: Piety of the Northern Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century was preceded and followed by two excellent papers on the implications of still life and the search for a Mormon aesthetic! I was pleased with the reception and the insightful questions and comments to my paper.
There were so many fascinating topics to be presented and it was not possible to hear them all. However, penguins collect in colonies and so all of us penguins attended the presentations by our own where the audience response was very favorable in every situation. The 2010 GLS Symposium was a resounding success and we wished our fellow colleagues best wishes and adios, until hopefully, we meet again next year.
Editor's Note: Elizabeth is one of six Graduate Humanities students invited to present at the GLS Symposium at Reed. The other students are:
Carolyn Matthews: An Analysis of the Message of the Negro Spirituals Within the Context of Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope
Kathleen S. Deadder: Influences of Trade with the Islamic World in Italian Renaissance Painting
Keith Hayes: Skating Pisa
Dan Melligan: The Liminality of Dickens' Christmas Carol'
Haley Ruddell: Kathleen ni Houlihan
heading for the big lights
"The Painted Casket," a play written by Robert Bradford (06), won the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Play in the Fringe of Marin Festival at Dominican. It was later reprised by Construct Theatre Company in New York. No doubt, given his dedication to the craft, Broadway is next!
Robert, affectionally known around campus as Bobby, is a prolific writer who, upon graduation, was recruited by the English Department here at Dominican University of California to teach a signature writing class for returning adult bachelor of art students called "Critical Inquiry and Reflective Writing." The highly intensive course helps students earn academic credit for prior life experience. Bobby is perfect for this role. His interdisciplinary training in the Graduate Humanities program gives him a broad academic background and an appreciation of diverse perspectives and methodologies. And, as a playwright, he has a deep connection with ideas, language and form, as well as the sensitivity needed for shepharding adult students through the process of writing about their emotionally rich lives.
Teaching in Nepal
Submitted by Don Worsham
I am a Dominican Graduate of Humanities candidate living in Boudha Nath, Kathmandu, Nepal where I have worked for over a decade. Currently, I work for the Sherpa Education Initiative (SEI) which is fairly new NGO with a single mission of expanding / improving educational opportunities for the Sherpa community. In simple language I get folks to education and education to folks. We have placed three Sherpa young women in university in the US and are rebuilding several aged Hillary schools in the Khumbu. In addition we are working with Rimpoches at Tengboche and Thupten Choling Monasteries to build the first new Buddhism school in 30 yrs.
I work out of the Kathmandu University (KU) Center for Buddhist Studies near Boudha Stupa where my family and I have a home. In addition I am a part-time contractor for the United Nations, take classes in Tibetan language and advanced Buddhist Studies at KU, and research two (2) Independent Studies for Dominican in support of my Masters. These are:
- The Ethics of Emptiness – Analysis of the conceptual, existential and linguistic strategies by which Mahayana Buddhist philosophers attempt to resolve the apparent non-dualist implications of Sunyata to substantiate a normative / cognitive ethical discourse.
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Colliding Cosmologies - investigates attempts by Nepal’s neo-Maoist political movement to influence traditional Buddhist and Hindu cosmological beliefs through manipulation of rites, rituals, festivals and education to create a world-view more inline with that of the Maoist Doctrine.
But more important than all the above is that I am F1 racing fan, climber, paraglider, rabid road cyclist, piss poor, bruised and frankly just not good mountain biker, endlessly beginner yogi and, most importantly, rapidly nearing middle age daddy of three who got lucky enough to marry his best friend.
Southwest Field Trip
Cheramie Johhnson and Elizabeth Skelton, two Graduate Humanities students, joined the ten-day Dominican sponsored educational field trip to the American Southwest for independent study credit.
The fieldtrip, led by Professors Arthur Scott, Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Studies, and Jim Cunningham, Associate Professor of Biology, explored the ancient cultures of New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern Colorado, as well as the geographical and geological significance of the American Southwest.
Thirteen intrepid travelers flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico; then hopped in two vans and headed for Chaco Canyon, built and occupied by the Anasazi from approximately 850-1250 C.E. From there, they traveled to Shiiprock, NM, then to the misanamed Aztec Ruins National Monument, and to Mesa Verde National Park where they explored the ancient cliff dwellings of the Pueblo Indians, ancestors of the Hopi and other Pueblo tribes. Their final stop was a visit to Canyon de Chelly, where they received a personalized tour from a Dine (Navajo) guide.
3rd Annual Joint Student and Alumni Symposium
Dominican Graduate Humanities Students presented their research at the 3rd Annual Joint Student and Alumni Symposium at Stanford University with participants from ten colleges and universities in the western region of the United States, including: Dominican University of California, Maastricht University, Marylhurst University, Reed College, San Diego State University, Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, St. Mary's College, Oklahoma University, University of Southern California
The following Dominican Humanities graduate students and alumni gave presentations:
Anne O'Brien: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Catherine Borg: Stupa Beginnings in Buddhism
Stephen Galliani: Words as Art: A New Perspective on Shaped Poetry
Kendall Roper: Animated Letters in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts: Embodied Signs of a Culture's Transition Toward Literacy
Neal Wolfe (alumus): Conceptualizing God in a Post-Copernican Universe
